Farm Fresh Blog

I kill plants. I am the Dr Kevorkian of plants. If a plant wants to die, I will help it. Actually, if it doesn't want to die, I will help that one die too. If you have four legs, I will keep you alive, but if you have a stem and are stuck in a pot . . . things just ain't lookin' good for ya 'round here.

I'm the kind of person who picks up a little potted plant at the nursery and it screams to be put back in the flat with its buddies. For that little plant knows it has a better shot at survival by getting the occasional watering at Home Depot than taking its chances with me.

But this year I planted two tomatoes and a basil in one big pot on my back porch. I would water it when I watered the dogs. How hard would that be? The sheep and goats are there from time to time, but they ignore the pot because they'd rather eat my roses.

And so it was that I found soon myself with thick basil amid ripening tomatoes. Who says I have a black thumb? I examined my crop of basil last week and proclaimed it to be enough to make pesto. This is how the pesto adventure went:

Go to store. Buy pine nuts. Buy cheese. Buy garlic. Olive oil? No, have that. Get home. Discover that I have no olive oil. Cuss. Wait a week. Have even more basil now. Go back to store. Buy olive oil. Come home to discover that dairy goats have eaten all the basil while I was gone . . .

And how does the milk taste!?!? That's the funniest thing, is how the milk takes the flavor of what those damned milk goats stole off the porch.

Posted by sue on 06/29/2011 - 01:29 PM

At this point in time, it appears to me you only need the pine nuts, garlic & olive oil. If you use the goat milk to make the cheese. LOL

Posted by LYNNE on 06/29/2011 - 03:02 PM

LOL!! Reminds me of the time when my kids were young teenagers. I couldn't figure out why the goat milk tasted so bad.It went on for weeks and I never figured it out. Fast forward to adult children at a family dinner discussing some of the things they did growing up. Seems the kids were feeding the goats baby Miller Lights. Mystery solved and I couldn't even ground them.

Posted by Janet on 06/29/2011 - 06:02 PM

I am laughing so hard I can't breath. You may have killed me! LOL

Posted by paulainnevada on 06/29/2011 - 10:17 PM

Please what are "baby Miller Lights." sounds pretty awful. Cheese would be the go just that soft stuff (Ricotta) flavoured delicatly with basil. Maybe not :) still laughing. I consider myself a good gardener but I too have had animal weed wackers (whipper snippers)prune the vegetables. NOT FUNNY

Posted by Liz (VicAust) on 06/29/2011 - 10:21 PM

Baby Miller Lights (this was in the 70's) were small bottles of Miller Light beer. They probably held about 6 oz of beer in small glass bottles. One of the neighbors drank them and the kids would raid the stash and give them to the goat. I didn't ask 'cause I didn't want to know how many the kids drank.

Posted by janet on 06/30/2011 - 05:19 PM

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